Surgical Strike
by Medie
Summary: it was quick, painless, and flawlessly logical. AU Season 4 ficlet


Title: Surgical Strike

Genre: Alias

Rating: PG

Disclaimer: Don't own 'em. Don't want to. Just playing a bit.

Author's Note: for slodwick's "A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words Challenge". I didn't count the time stamps toward the word count. (They're akin to Chapter divisons). Though if I should, lemme know and I'll fix. :-p Thanks to varyar, illmantrim and kayjayuu for the read through. Any remaining mistakes are because I'm blind or clueless. Fic was inspired by this picture. The fic is set in Season 4 Alias but it's quite AU. Veers away from canon anytime after the season premiere.

"Surgical Strike"  
by M.

_**2:25 am**_

She slipped into the men's room, closing the heavy wooden door behind her, shutting out the pulsing techno music. The sudden lack of the throbbing beat left her body feeling strangely bereft but Sydney ignored the sensation in favor of prowling the room.

The silence after the screaming music only heightened the usual absent comm chatter as she was going dark on the op...it was vaguely unsettling but she didn't have time to worry about it. She had a few minutes to get in, place the surveillance, and get out. She was running out of time.

Pulling the cam from her bra, she looked about quickly for a potential hiding place. She found one in a ventilation grate in the ceiling and vaulted up onto the metal sink to place it. Bracing herself against the grimy mirror, she reached up to slip it through the fine mesh. Beneath her heels, the sink wobbled dangerously and threw Sydney off balance. One boot slipped and in the struggle to keep her balance she didn't hear the ping of the shot...

_**2:30 am**_

The wall of fuzzy green greeted her when she managed to open her eyes. Confused, Sydney pressed a shaking hand to her temple and tried to force her thoughts into some semblance of order. No easy feat since her head was determinedly throbbing and the pain worsened with every breath.

Sucking down a quick gasp of air, she rested her head against the cold ceramic tile of the wall and blinked hard. Twice. Three times. Slowly her vision began to clear and the fuzzy green blur gradually resolved itself into a wall of urinals.

Just beautiful.

She wasn't surprised when her hand came away from her head wet with blood. She dimly remembered a sharp pain before losing her footing but...

It hadn't been in her head.

She struggled into a sitting position as her mind whirled with the memories, trying to pick out what had happened. Everything just before was a jumble of fragmented memories to sift through and...

Her side.

Sydney looked down, reflexively pressing a hand to the wound she found there. She was still bleeding but slowly. No major arteries. Good. She ripped off a piece of her sleeve and forced it tight against the skin. She had to think. Everything depended on it. She had to think.

She passed out.

_**2:35 am**_

No one was coming. If they were, they would have by now. Blearily, Sydney realized it had to have been a trap. They'd wanted her to come. The intelligence had been the perfect carrot. The CIA'd handed it to APO and Sloane had handed it to her. For her, it was a cakewalk. A milk run mission with just enough danger to sweeten the pot. They'd wanted her to come. She was the target. They'd wanted her to get overconfident. To let down her guard. They'd been waiting.

But why was she alive? The perfect shot and they only wounded her?

Sydney groaned and rubbed her forehead again. The headache was going to kill her. Maybe that was it. She hit her head on the way down and they hoped the concussion would just finish her off. Her head was pounding worse and she could barely think. God, it had to be the worst headache of her life. Except for the ones she got when Marshall rambled on just five seconds too long about his handy dandy new lipstick laser which was guaranteed to cut the head off of the nearest terrorist and was perfect for a manicure in case she broke a nail on somebody's face.

Whatever it was...she just hoped Weiss or Nadia showed up soon. With aspirin. Lots of aspirin.

But in the meantime...

She passed out again.

_**6:15 pm**_

The urinals were gone when she woke up. Replaced by the sterile white of a hospital wall. She looked over, her Dad was asleep in a chair by her bed and he looked graver than usual. Her head didn't hurt, her side didn't hurt, Sydney didn't see why he would be.

She was all set to write it off to parental overprotection - an art her father was master of - when it hit her.

It didn't hurt.

It hadn't hurt.

Not when she'd been waiting. Not now.

Lifting her head, Sydney looked down and with a terrible feeling of foreboding, wiggled her toes. Or, at least, tried to. "Dad..."

The edge of fear in her voice brought her father awake immediately. "Sydney?"

"My legs, Dad..." She turned a shocked, numb expression on her father. "Are they...am I?" She swallowed, closing her eyes and forcing herself to ask the question, "Am I paralzyed?"

"Yes.." He responded, his answer stoic as he tried to cover his own reaction, trying to protect her as always. "The doctors...they think the shooter wanted this. The shot was too precise to be anything else."

Why kill her when they could do this? It made sense now. It suddenly made so much sense. She didn't need to be dead. Not for this. She just needed to be not... "Oh my God." Reaching out, she clutched her father's arm as the memory her mind had been battling with suddenly crystallized and she looked up. "Dad...I..." She bit off the sentence as the full import of it sunk in. "Dad..."

"Sydney?" Jack leaned over. "Sydney? What is it? Are you in pain? What is it --"

"Mom." Sydney uttered the word in a voice choked with a hundred different emotions. "I...It...It was Mom. Mom shot me..." She fell back against the pillows, letting go of his arm. "She did this..."

"Your mother..." Sitting down again, her father looked her in the eye. "Sydney, that's impossible...You know what happened to your mother...She's --"

"Dead?" She twisted her lips into a shadow of a smile. A mockery of a smile. "So you said. But, I know what I saw. If Mom was dead..." She laughed bitterly, the irony of her realization unmistakable, "she's better now."

finis


End file.
